Seven Projects of B S Johnson
by Virtuella
Summary: The title says it all, really.


_Dedicated to Andrew Salt, in gratitude for much help and encouragement. Discworld belongs to Pterry, obviously. Thanks to Ignoble Bard for beta-reading._

* * *

**Seven Projects of Bergholt Stuttley Johnson**

**Board paper outlining content of proposed dissertation **

**Submitted by Robert Archibald Winter**

**Department of Bizarre and Dysfunctional Architecture**

**Quirm College**

**Spune, The Year of the Underestimated Trout**

Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, without doubt the most inspired architect of the Century of the Fruitbat, has left a lasting legacy of fascinating buildings and landscaping efforts. Much research has been dedicated to those of his projects located in and around Ankh-Morpork and Quirm, but those in other vicinities have received less attention. It is the purpose of this paper to redress the balance and take a closer look at his considerable activity in other parts of the Disc, especially in the region of Rham Nitz.

Johnson's work presents some prime examples of bizarre and dysfunctional architecture which on its own would secure him a place in history even if he hadn't also made a name for himself as an inventor, producing such fine devices as the patent folded picnic basket with integrated self-opening parasol or the stainless steel duvet cover.* His confident disregard for proportion and his "grand visions of monumentality beyond any practicality" (Wildman, The Year of the Meaningless Pelican) are the hallmark of his genius. I shall, in this paper, present seven projects of particular interest which I propose to examine in more detail in my dissertation. These are the Dammed City of Bling, the Bell Tower of Rham Nitz, the Great Rimward Road, the Smarl Bridge, Rham Nitz Multi-storey Carriage Park, Rham Nitz Public Baths, and the Inverted Amphitheatre of Ohulan.

* Complaints about the latter invention appear irrational and groundless, given that Johnson's claim the duvet cover would require neither washing nor ironing was entirely accurate.

The Dammed City of Bling

For all that unkind voices like to speak of the "Damned" City of Bling, the design of the town was one of Johnson's most original and artistically inspired undertakings. "Who would not enjoy residing in a city where, instead of treading mundane lanes and alleyways, the populace travels by boat from door to door, where gentle waves lap under the windows and sunlight glints off the waters on the market place?" (Johnson, The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole)

There is an irresistible charm about the idea of a city criss-crossed by canals on which gaily coloured boats drift to and fro. Johnson's original plans, which survived the destruction of Bling, show a careful layout of neat squares and his meticulously drawn elevations give an idea of the delightful prospects the city was supposed to have afforded. Bling was to provide housing for seventeen-thousand inhabitants and feature a public library, theatre, hospital and dry-skiing facility, which would have made it the envy of the surrounding communities.

Tupperware (The Year of the Adolescent Panda) calls the Bling catastrophe "foreseeable" and claims Johnson should have known that a mountain slope was no suitable site for the proposed project.

"Was it total incompetence or sheer stubborn determination that prompted Johnson to surround the city with a dam five miles in circumference and one-hundred and twenty feet high at it its highest point? It is perhaps as futile to muse about his motives as it is to search for the remains of the seventy-eight workmen who were lost when the dam burst." (Tupperware, ibid.)

Tupperware's assessment strikes me as cynical and does not give credit to the brilliant and innovative outward-curving design of the dam, which Johnson conceived after a convivial evening in the Taberna Macculata (Hopscotch, The Year of the Retreating Beaver). However much the site probably _was_ unsuitable, it must be noted that Johnson introduced a new and exciting element to city planning that is as yet unparalleled.

The Bell Tower of Rham Nitz

The most easily distinguished landmark of the region, the Bell Tower of Rham Nitz rises to an impressive height of 327.4 feet. Contrary to popular belief, it does not lean; the impression of the tower slanting widdershins is "due to an optical illusion caused by the turnwise inclination of the surrounding buildings, _none of which were designed or executed by Johnson_." (Wildman, The Year of the Meaningless Pelican, my italics)

The tower consists of a single hollow shaft of pink marble with a spiral arcade on the outside providing access to the main chamber at the top. The construction rests on very solid foundations, including a domed two-storey crypt, the lower part of which reaches twenty-seven feet below ground level. Four identical guard houses embellished with blind columns are positioned on the ground floor. All parts of the ensemble are aesthetically pleasing.

Repeated tests (Haberdash et al, The Year of the Constipated Herring; Zingford, The Year of the Uplifting Mayfly) have shown that the statics of the structure are uncommonly sound and that the magically enhanced oak crossbeams in the top chamber of the tower are able to hold a weight of up to 27 tonnes. Industrial size pulleys were freely available in Rham Nitz at the time of construction. (Wildman, ibid.) Speculations therefore continue as to why, in the face of these facts, Johnson decided to place the sixteen magnificent bells in the lower level of the crypt. It is possible that he had doubts about the durability of the marble under a constant onslaught of tolling bells. (Kattegat, The Year of the Turquoise Chandelier) While Johnson is reported to have said to the foreman, "You can't hang them up at the top, just imagine what a racket that would make all over the town," this remark is entirely anecdotal and not attested in any peer-reviewed account.

The Great Rimward Road

Little has been written about the Great Rimward Road, which is surprising, given the sheer scale of the undertaking. The most prominent pronouncement on this astonishing enterprise is the comment by Elderson (The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole): "One has to wonder what kind of parson (sic!) comes up with such an idiotic plan. The sooner it is forgotten about, the better." In light of the fact that Johnson was at no point in his life ordained or otherwise associated with the clergy, I consider Elderson's assessment as unqualified and will argue that, on the contrary, the Great Rimward Road is a tremendous piece of pioneering.

Stretching as it does for nearly three thousand miles across the continent, the Great Rimward Road would have had the potential to provide a vital link between Ankh-Morpork, Uberwald, Borogravia and Genua, more than thirty years before the construction of the post road on this route. Needless to say, such a road would have brought with it significant political and economic benefits. (Abbott et al, The Year of the Unexpected Doughnut). Johnson, however, shunned such mundane notions of utility and with true vision for grandeur drove a highway through the Smarl River Swamps, across the Higher Klatchistanian Mountains and over the Salpetre Plains, skirting round the shores of the Humungous Salt Lake and eventually ending in the rubble desert widdershins of Brindisi without once passing a major town or, for that matter, any inhabited region at all.

It can be easily imagined what enormous amounts of money, labour and sheer willpower were necessary to complete this unique work of engineering. During the entire eleven years' construction, countless critics called for the abortion of the project, but Johnson did not once stray from the path he had chosen and completed the road in the face of apparently insurmountable adversity. Given the extent of his engineering achievement, it seems petty to quarrel about such secondary issues as destination. As Johnson (The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole) himself so eloquently put it: "Anybody can build a road that leads somewhere. It's building a road that leads nowhere that takes real vision."

The Smarl Bridge

The construction of the Great Rimward Road required many smaller scale engineering feats, none as ingenious as the moving and movable bridge over the River Smarl. The bridge is designed to float on a series of seven pontoons that allow it to be moved to a suitable position along the riverbank, should heavy rains make crossing in line with the road impossible.*

To spare travellers the "tedium of having to walk" (Johnson, The Year of the Exuberant Sloth), the bridge is fitted with a series of scoop shaped compartments attached to a golem driven conveyor belt. The traveller was to step into one of those compartments, be transported across the river in a smooth and pleasing motion and put down at the far end without having to catch his breath. Admittedly, the design could have been greatly improved by a mechanism that would have kept the compartments upright for the duration of the journey. (Winter, The Year of the Constipated Herring) As it was, the navvies who tested the bridge objected so strongly to being tipped upside down into the swamp that further plans for introducing such "Mater Vester" bridges in other locations were abandoned.

It should be noted that while the bridge has been of limited use as a means for crossing the River Smarl, or any other river for that matter (Wheelbrace, The Year of the Malnourished Gnu), it has for the last twenty-five years done stalwart service as a digging device in an open cast mining site in Istanzia, where it was accidentally washed up after a flash flood in the Upper Smarl region. (Hingh, The Year of the Unspecified Caterpillar)

*Wildman (The Year of the Meaningless Pelican) points out that Johnson with unerring instinct chose the widest and swampiest part of the river as a crossing point for the Great Rimward Road.

Rham Nitz Multi-storey Carriage Park

Johnson understood early in his career that congestion and lack of parking facilities were one of the most pressing concerns of urban life in the Century of the Fruitbat. "The man," he says, "who can devise a method by which multiple equipages can be stored in the smallest possible space, will have done a greater service to the general public than the one who succeeds in eating two ice-cream cones simultaneously without spilling anything." (Johnson, The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole). Yet it was not until he was past the fifty, during his fruitful period of work in Rham Nitz, that he would finally be allowed to make his vision reality.

Rham Nitz Multi-storey Carriage Park occupies a prime location in the heart of Rham Nitz on the former site of the Butterfly Gardens and next to the large empty space of the abandoned race course.* It consists of a series of interlocking circuits or "bands" which are possessed of a 180 degree twist that is supposed to make both the top and the underside usable for parking vehicles, thus doubling the available parking space.

The construction is, admittedly, entirely dysfunctional in that the bands, by virtue of having no beginning and no end, offer neither entrance nor exit to prospective customers. However, Johnson was undoubtedly on the right track. Spiders, ants and other small crawling creatures have indeed been observed to move both on the top and the underside of the bands, often with a decided air of confusion. (Merian, The Year of the Bewildered Shield Bug) It is to be hoped that future generations will be able to take full advantage of Johnson's ingenious discovery without being hampered by small-minded prejudices concerning gravity and other negligible factors.

*In my opinion, Harzwile and Ammergow (The Year of the Mummified Stork) exaggerate the extent of local resentment against the building of a parking facility on the site of the popular public gardens.

Rham Nitz Public Baths 

The commission to design a generous public bathing facility for the City of Rham Nitz marks a high point in Johnson's career and is evidence of the great degree of trust and respect Johnson commanded in the region. This welcoming attitude is clearly expressed in an anonymous letter to the Rham Nitz Herald (18th of Grune, The Year of The Adulterous Walrus):

"I have to congratulate the City Council of Rham Nitz for their latest decision to have a public bathing facility designed and built by Mr Johnson. It takes some genius to give such a prestigious commission to the man who so brilliantly erected an unusable carriage park on the site of our beloved Butterfly Gardens and hid away our bells in an underground cave. We expect with bated breath the results this mastermind will surprise us with this time – no doubt we will be astonished beyond our wildest imaginations."

The actual outcome of the commission did, perhaps, fall short of such high expectations, but nonetheless the Johnson Baths serve the city well and are currently delivering an outstanding public service (Overflow, et al, The Year of the Unspecified Caterpillar), albeit not the one originally intended.

The three enormous, circular pools of the Johnson Baths ("One for males, one for females, and one for others;" Johnson, The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole) would have been an enchanting sight to behold if clear water allowed a view of the fine, hand painted tiles that line the basins and of the intricate mosaic floors. Johnson, however, rejected the idea of installing pumps to fill the pools from a fresh water reservoir fifteen miles turnwise of the town. Allegedly, he considered this a "waste of resources" (Prattle, The Year of the Retreating Beaver) and pointed out that the city already had "a plethora of well-functioning water pipes which only need to be redirected a little." (ibid.) It is to date unclear whether Johnson ever envisaged to separate the fresh water from the waste water pipes, and it will be one of the purposes of my dissertation to clarify this point.

While the Johnson Baths could have been considered a tremendous failure for the thirty-eight years during which their malodorous contents contaminated the neighbourhood, it cannot be denied that the recent invention of the sludge filter has given them a new lease of life and that the Rham Nitz sewage works fulfil "a crucial role for the environmental health of the community." (Overflow et al, The Year of the Unspecified Caterpillar)

The Inverted Amphitheatre of Ohulan

Few local landmarks have attracted less attention than the Inverted Amphitheatre of Ohulan.

"Approaching the town from a rimward direction, the walker first distinguishes a row of ramshackle houses to the left of the river, while beyond the bridge a fine paper mill greets us with flying sails. An ancient right of way leads right through the backyard of the bakery and onto the town square, where it is advisable to refrain from purchasing any kind of refreshments."

This account of Ohulan by Wheelbrace (The Year of the Half-eaten Apple) shows all too clearly how easily the Inverted Amphitheatre is overlooked even by the seasoned traveller. The path between the bridge and the mill would have led Wheelbrace right past the amphitheatre, and yet he discovered it not.

Partly obscured by hazel shrubs and bramble thickets, the amphitheatre is one of Ohulan's best kept secrets and even though Johnson gives a detailed account of its construction in his autobiography (Johnson, The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole), few know where to find it. I was fortunate enough, during a summer vacation in Ohulan, to be befriended by a local maiden who generously led me to the site, which, she assured me, was quite popular with the younger people, though for what precise reason I cannot say, because in general the inhabitants of Ohulan show little interest in Bizarre and Dysfunctional Architecture.

According to his own words, Johnson wanted to "try something new" and "break with the tedious theatrical convention that everybody had to look at the same thing." (Johnson, The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole) The amphitheatre consists of a semi-circular ditch on six levels, the uppermost with a diameter of twenty-four feet, increasing to seventy-five feet on the lowest level. The seated areas are outward facing, allowing the audience a variety of different views of the opposite wall of the ditch. There is no stage. "Actors are just blokes strutting about trying to impress the girls, and we don't want to encourage that, what do you think?" (Johnson, ibid.) The only performance ever attempted in the amphitheatre* was abandoned after the first act. (Ogg, The Year of The Feisty Old Lady)

*_Don't Stand On The Balcony At Night, You'll Catch Your Death _performed by the Ohulan Thespian Society

Conclusion

It seems clear to me from the above that there is ample scope for further research into Johnson's work beyond the Sto Plains and I respectfully request that the examination board of the college grant me permission to undertake such research and present my findings in my dissertation. "Buggered if you don't agree!" (Johnson, The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole)

Bibliography

Abbott, A., Babbott, B. and Cabbott, C. (The Year of the Unexpected Doughnut) _The Road To Genua. Herald of a New Age of International Relations_, Genua, Weatherwax Publications

Elderson, X. (The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole) _The Road Not Taken. A Reflection on BS Johnson and the Great Rimward Road_, Quirm, Hasselman Publications

Haberdash, E., Edgars, V. and Cockroach, B. (The Year of the Constipated Herring) _Structural Observations on the Bell Tower of Rham Nitz, _Rham Nitz, Hubwards Community Press

Harzwile, J. and Ammergow, L. (The Year of the Mummified Stork) _An Architect's Guide to Rham Nitz and Surroundings_, Rham Nitz, Hubwards Community Press

Hingh, P. (The Year of the Unspecified Caterpillar) _Salsalite Mining in Istanzia – a Pointless Endeavour?_ Al Khali, Serail Press

Hopscotch, P.P.P. (The Year of the Retreating Beaver), _Bergholt Stuttley Johnson. A Biography. _Ankh-Morpork. Unseen University Press

Johnson, B.S. (The Year of the Slightly Overcooked Casserole) _A Life on the Edge_, Ankh-Morpork, Goatberger Publications

Johnson, B.S. (The Year of the Exuberant Sloth) _Adventures on the Great Rimward Road. An Engineer's Diary_, Ankh-Morpork, Goatberger Publications

Johnson, B.S. (The Year of the Nutritious Sperm Whale) _Plans For a Canal-based City in the Region of Betrek_, Ankh-Morpork, Goatberger Publictions

Kattegat, H. (The Year of the Turquoise Chandelier) _A Revised Assessment of BS Johnson's Use of Materials With Particular Regard to the Bell Tower of Rham Nitz_, in: Architectural Almanack, Vol IV, p.235-248

Merian, M.S.(The Year of the Bewildered Shield Bug) _Insect Studies In and Around Rham Nitz_, in: Entomology Yesterday, Vol XXIII, p.322-338

Ogg, N. (The Year of The Feisty Old Lady) _Gossip From Lance and Around,_ Ankh-Morpork, Goatberger Publications

Overflow, D., Sunnyside, U. and Vitamin. B. (The Year of the Unspecified Caterpillar) _The Rham Nitz Sewage System_, Rham Nitz, Hubwards Community Press

Prattle, D. (The Year of the Retreating Beaver) _Conversations With A Mastermind. Seventeen Interviews with BS Johnson_, Ankh-Morpork, Unseen University Press

Tupperware, O. (The Year of the Adolescent Panda) _The Bling Debacle. Perspectives and Perceptions. _Quirm, Hasselman Publications

Wheelbrace, E. (The Year of the Malnourished Gnu) _Beyond the Smarl. Challenging Walks on the Far Side of the Muddy River_, Ankh-Morpork, Gannet Paperbacks

Wheelbrace, E. (The Year of the Half-eaten Apple) _Ohulan Rediscovered_, Ankh-Morpork, Gannet Paperbacks

Wildman, G. (The Year of the Meaningless Pelican) _BS Johnson – Genius or Lunatic?_ 5th edition, Ankh-Morpork, Unseen University Press

Winter, G. (The Year of the Constipated Herring) _Why the Smarl Bridge had to Fail_, in: Pseudopolis Pamphlets, Vol VIII, P.87-109

Zingford, K. (The Year of the Uplifting Mayfly ) _Make or Break? The Bell Tower of Rham Nitz in the Light of Contemporary Statics_, Rham Nitz, Hubwards Community Press


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